Unbox the sprites in the lineage page.

[blockEdragon]

While I was looking at the lineage pages I thought something, I thought that while the newer layout is much cleaner and a huge improvement it still has a problem in my book and that problem is the box.

We have these lovely sprites that are already on the small side and still manage to be very finely detailed and then these boxes go and cut them off and make them even smaller, one of the best things to do with a good sprite is to go and make a lineage out of it so I for one think it's kind of a waste to make the details that much harder to see for almost no apparent reason.

 

Here is a crude visualization of what I have in mind:

(Key word: CRUDE, I did this is MS paint with some screenshot clippings)

(I know Carina are hybrids and this specific line can't exist but I needed dragons with a lot of little details and they fit the requirement)

 

My biggest issue with the current setup is that the sprites with finer details often don't really show them on the lineage page because they're so tiny and  up to half the sprite is not even shown! So I think that the lineage screen should be unboxed so that the full sprite is visible in all it's finely crafted glory. While size may be brought up as an issue since sprites are much larger than the boxes, the boxed sprites already shrink once the lineage gets bigger in order to save space, so the same thing could be applied to the full sprites:

 

Maybe it could be a setting you can switch back and fourth from.

Quote

Personally, I like this suggestion and you get my support on this, but, seeing all the comments above, I though of something - what if you could choose which way to view them? On mobile, there is only one site skin and only 50 dragons per page while on PC you can change that. What if it's the same for this? You could choose if you want to view with or without the boxes (mobile would always have the boxes).

-Andromen

Edited April 25, 2018 by blockEdragon

[olympe]

I'm not sure about this. On the one hand, it certainly gives us a good idea what we're working with, and we won't have to worry about getting our lineage view changed due to an update in the layout if the lineage view shows the actual sprites, not some down-sized versions.

 

On the other hand, it would be just another change that might or might not annoy breeders and change the look of certain lines. Which would make this suggestion a change in order to avoid change, so to speak. And that doesn't really make sense.

 

On another note, a huge EG lineage with full-sized sprites would take up a lot of space, which is quite a drawback, especially on mobile. Making this optional doesn't really seem to help this suggestion along, either.

 

Unless some better arguments in favor of this come up, I don't see a reason to support this suggestion.

[blockEdragon]

1 hour ago, olympe said:

I'm not sure about this. On the one hand, it certainly gives us a good idea what we're working with, and we won't have to worry about getting our lineage view changed due to an update in the layout if the lineage view shows the actual sprites, not some down-sized versions.

 

On the other hand, it would be just another change that might or might not annoy breeders and change the look of certain lines. Which would make this suggestion a change in order to avoid change, so to speak. And that doesn't really make sense.

 

On another note, a huge EG lineage with full-sized sprites would take up a lot of space, which is quite a drawback, especially on mobile. Making this optional doesn't really seem to help this suggestion along, either.

 

Unless some better arguments in favor of this come up, I don't see a reason to support this suggestion.

Not that I don't understand the worry in my tastes a shrunken sprite is still better then an already shrunken sprite + a chunk of it missing. The sprites already shrink in longer lineages precisely to save space, the older generations are smaller than the newer (shown in the green lineage) so overly long lineages would probably look similar to how they do now, just without boxes.

 

The mobile platform still matters but when it comes to display corners must be cut. the page for lineages is huge on the PC so of mobile couldn't handle it i'm sure we could find a solution, perhaps smaller (but unboxed) sprites for mobile lineage view.

[The Dragoness]

I understand where you're coming from with this suggestion, but I think I actually like the boxes. I would rather see them enlarged to fit all sprites than removed, honestly. They just make the lineage view page look so clean. As a mobile player, I also agree with olympe's points above.

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

The boxes help make everything look nicer because Dragon Cave’s sprites aren’t all the same size. People enjoy the look of lineages because they’re all orderly and evenly spaced, whereas having a... female Ridgewing and a male Storm, for instance, would look quite messy due to the sprites being so different in terms of height and length. As such, I like the boxes as they are right now, and I know people who meticulously breed for pretty lineages will feel the same.

Edited April 24, 2018 by RealWilliamShakespeare

[Mewtie]

For gaining a pretty clear impression of a lineage as a whole in a very low amount of time, compactness in size and detail seems actually rather helpful.

Edited April 24, 2018 by Mewtie

[TCA]

1 hour ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

The boxes help make everything look nicer because Dragon Cave’s sprites aren’t all the same size. People enjoy the look of lineages because they’re all orderly and evenly spaced, whereas having a... female Ridgewing and a male Storm, for instance, would look quite messy due to the sprites being so different in terms of height and length. As such, I like the boxes as they are right now, and I know people who meticulously breed for pretty lineages will feel the same.

 

This is basically my thoughts on the matter. I already didn't really like the switch to trees and still miss the even boxier old lineage layout, please don't change The Look I've worked on any further.

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Ironic that blocked dragon is asking for unblocked dragons!

 

I would like this AS AN OPTION. As others have said, some lineages look good right now precisely because they highlight certain parts of a breed or make two very dissimilar ones work nicely together. Years of work have gone into working with those placements. On the OTHER hand, some dragons really suffer from being cut down due to their posing, in which case an unboxed view would help immensely. So I’d like both.

 

Edit: maybe rather than having it an option like a scroll setting, it could be a toggle that changes between the normal lineage view and a lineage/u/ view or something (the specific format doesn’t really matter, just something that people can intentionally link others to)

Edited April 25, 2018 by angelicdragonpuppy

[StormWizard212]

2 hours ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

The boxes help make everything look nicer because Dragon Cave’s sprites aren’t all the same size. People enjoy the look of lineages because they’re all orderly and evenly spaced, whereas having a... female Ridgewing and a male Storm, for instance, would look quite messy due to the sprites being so different in terms of height and length. As such, I like the boxes as they are right now, and I know people who meticulously breed for pretty lineages will feel the same.

 

This sums up my opinion exactly. I like the boxes because they add structure and streamline the lineage view. I think the page would look messy and awkward without them, even though the sprites are lovely. In the example you made, I miss the structure of the boxes and the fact that they're the same size. This would be even more evident when breeding a Mint and a Red, for example. I would personally prefer to leave things how they are at the moment.

Edited April 25, 2018 by StormWizard212

[Whirlaway]

To me, the boxes are fine. There are so many sprites that vary in such different sizes (even with the normal breeds!) that I believe it would create more of a disparate look than the boxes do with some.

[HeatherMarie]

7 hours ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

The boxes help make everything look nicer because Dragon Cave’s sprites aren’t all the same size. People enjoy the look of lineages because they’re all orderly and evenly spaced, whereas having a... female Ridgewing and a male Storm, for instance, would look quite messy due to the sprites being so different in terms of height and length. As such, I like the boxes as they are right now, and I know people who meticulously breed for pretty lineages will feel the same.

 

This exactly. The boxes look nice. They give a very clean look to the page, and an organized look. It's very simple to see what goes with what and how exactly everything is connected.... The example in the OP shows only a small lineage with a few dragons, but I could imagine a long complicated lineage would be a lot harder to look at and quickly understand with no boxes. I'm looking at some of my newest messies, I would not want something like this with no boxes, the boxes are a welcome guideline to draw my eyes. And while the OP seems to be talking specifically about boxes, the example shows *full-sized* sprites, not just the smaller lineage versions without boxes, and I certainly would not want that.

[Fuzzbucket]

8 hours ago, The Dragoness said:

I understand where you're coming from with this suggestion, but I think I actually like the boxes. I would rather see them enlarged to fit all sprites than removed, honestly. They just make the lineage view page look so clean. As a mobile player, I also agree with olympe's points above.

 

8 hours ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

The boxes help make everything look nicer because Dragon Cave’s sprites aren’t all the same size. People enjoy the look of lineages because they’re all orderly and evenly spaced, whereas having a... female Ridgewing and a male Storm, for instance, would look quite messy due to the sprites being so different in terms of height and length. As such, I like the boxes as they are right now, and I know people who meticulously breed for pretty lineages will feel the same.

I'm with this pov. Also, I think asking for things as optional all the time is kind of not on. I am with options for things like scroll view, which I imagine is "just" a toggle, but this would probably need input from spriters as well as from tj.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Fuzzbucket

[Andromen]

Personally, I like this suggestion and you get my support on this, but, seeing all the comments above, I though of something - what if you could choose which way to view them? On mobile, there is only one site skin and only 50 dragons per page while on PC you can change that. What if it's the same for this? You could choose if you want to view with or without the boxes (mobile would always have the boxes).

[SkyMet]

I'm not going to try to offer a solution, but I just want to say, that there are many beautiful dragons that I don't even bother breeding because they're so shrunken and cut off in the lineage view.  When you can't see most of the outline of the dragon, and the fine details look like a fuzzy blob when they're shrunk down, then what's the point of building a lineage with them?  I think the older sprites with very simple coloring still look good in the current lineage view (the seasonals, for example), but now that the sprites are getting fancier and more detailed, they look more amorphous.  For instance, the newest drakes (tatterdrakes) just look like a piece of kale in the lineage view.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Cielmuir

[HeatherMarie]

7 hours ago, Cielmuir said:

I'm not going to try to offer a solution, but I just want to say, that there are many beautiful dragons that I don't even bother breeding because they're so shrunken and cut off in the lineage view.  When you can't see most of the outline of the dragon, and the fine details look like a fuzzy blob when they're shrunk down, then what's the point of building a lineage with them?  I think the older sprites with very simple coloring still look good in the current lineage view (the seasonals, for example), but now that the sprites are getting fancier and more detailed, they look more amorphous.  For instance, the newest drakes (tatterdrakes) just look like a piece of kale in the lineage view.

 

I think that depends a lot on the user's computer/screen... Of course some detail is lost in the shrunken lineage images, but I don't personally see many that are *hugely* different. When I look at the lineage view of TJ's adult Tatterdrake (since you used them as an example) I can see that it's on it's hind legs with it's front legs up, I can see both wings and the head fairly clearly (although the left-most wing sort of looks like a 2nd head). And the thing is, lineage view has shrunken and cut off little bits of dragons for so long now, *many* lineages are actually based on that fact. I've seen many lineages that work mostly because of how the small lineage tile looks, because maybe a small bit is cut off and that makes it compliment the mate better, etc. A lot of lineage builders work with what they are given, and changing it drastically now would ruin what they've already started.

 

I like the example that was given of the female Ridgewing and male Storm, showing them both full-size in a lineage would not look complimentary at all because of their difference in size (a more extreme example might be the female Canopy and male Storm, one is very long but short and the other is very tall but thin). I certainly wouldn't be opposed to perhaps enlarging the lineage tiles a little bit, but definitely not full size.

[Fuzzbucket]

I have a number of lines that would look rather odd...

 

https://dragcave.net/lineage/GTqqr

For instance..

[Ruby Eyes]

The unbox option could be a tiny toggle button right next to the lineage generation header. Default view would be boxed, but if you're feeling curious/adventurous, click that button to load the boxfree version.

[olympe]

I still don't think that "let's make things optional" is the answer to everything. It's true that some things deserve to be optional, but not all things do.

[Ruby Eyes]

Everything you do here is optional, be it breeding, using BSAs, even collecting specific dragons or participating in events is optional.

 

That doesn't mean that everything needs to have an entry in your Account Settings menu, THAT much I'd agree with you. But another possibility to view something is neither more nor less than anything else you do in this game.

[Fuzzbucket]

2 hours ago, olympe said:

I still don't think that "let's make things optional" is the answer to everything. It's true that some things deserve to be optional, but not all things do.

Agree 100%

2 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Everything you do here is optional, be it breeding, using BSAs, even collecting specific dragons or participating in events is optional.

 

That doesn't mean that everything needs to have an entry in your Account Settings menu, THAT much I'd agree with you. But another possibility to view something is neither more nor less than anything else you do in this game.

Some things are easy to make optional. I rather suspect this isn't one of them.

 

More to the point, I really can't see the point of this one.

[Ruby Eyes]

6 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Some things are easy to make optional. I rather suspect this isn't one of them.

Not on us to judge that though. There's only one person who knows the ins and outs of DC

And that person didn't make a statement on feasibility of this feature yet, so this is a mere assumption.

[Aalbiel]

The good thing about boxing is that it makes very different sprites look equal on lineage page. Some sprites (that can be bred with each other) are wildly different sizes, and I'm not sure toggling on and off depending on which lineage you're looking at would be practical at all.

[Ruby Eyes]

Well ... it used to work fine in AoND's lineage viewer, until the API changed (and AoND's owner doesn't seem to have time to fix their site)

[Fuzzbucket]

38 minutes ago, Aalbiel said:

The good thing about boxing is that it makes very different sprites look equal on lineage page. Some sprites (that can be bred with each other) are wildly different sizes, and I'm not sure toggling on and off depending on which lineage you're looking at would be practical at all.

Exactly this. Vari-sized sprites would be a mess and make it hard to see the lineages properly.

48 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Not on us to judge that though. There's only one person who knows the ins and outs of DC

And that person didn't make a statement on feasibility of this feature yet, so this is a mere assumption.

That's why I said it might not be easy, not that it wouldn't be.

26 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Well ... it used to work fine in AoND's lineage viewer, until the API changed (and AoND's owner doesn't seem to have time to fix their site)

Bbik s always responsive to requests. But there was never an option, and all the boxes there are the same size. As long as there are boxes and all the boxes match, ok. But free floating sprites in a variety of sizes - no thanks.

 

Edited April 26, 2018 by Fuzzbucket

[HeatherMarie]

13 hours ago, Ruby Eyes said:

Everything you do here is optional, be it breeding, using BSAs, even collecting specific dragons or participating in events is optional.

 

That doesn't mean that everything needs to have an entry in your Account Settings menu, THAT much I'd agree with you. But another possibility to view something is neither more nor less than anything else you do in this game.

 

That's a different kind of optional though. The 'breed' button is there, whether or not we choose to breed. The eggs are there whether or not we choose to collect them. Toggles like the one being proposed, on the other hand, turn things on or off so they *aren't* there (or are there). It's like saying there is a piece of cake on the table and I can either eat it or not eat it, the eating is optional... but the toggle is saying change it so the cake isn't there at all. (Sorry, I express myself better through examples like that.)

 

I'm on another site where the site developer has talked at length about why 'just make it optional' is not usually a good way to go with site development. I'm not saying I know TJ's stance on it, I have no clue how he feels about it, but I do know that many site developers will balk at making a whole new feature just so the majority of people end up turning it off. Normally a new feature should be all or nothing, not 'whatever each individual user wants'. 

 

Anyways, I still think this would not look aesthetically pleasing at all with many dragon pairings. I understand wanting to see the sprites full-sized (although I don't really understand why the box itself is so bad), but I don't think it will look very nice.